Literary Analysis of The Lottery by Shirley JacksonAlthough several themes exist in the Lottery, only a few remain significant. Mrs. Hutchinson, who apparently arrived just moments after 10 A.M., ended up as the not so lucky person that received the black dot on her ticket. “Clean forgot what day it was……..and then I looked out the window and the kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty-seventh and came a-running” (Jackson 3). She simply forgot the special event that took place that day and did nothing wrong. Never in the story did Shirley Jackson hint that Mrs. Hutchinson reeked of evil; however, she was punished brutally for no just picking a slip of paper out of some old, black box. Anyone in this small town, even the children, have the same chance of becoming the one murder victim. “Nancy was twelve, and her school friends breathed heavily as she went forward switching her skirt, and took a slip daintily from the box” (5). This goes for America’s society where any random person can be jailed or accused of something they were wrongly accused for. Society punishes innocent citizens based on faulty accusations or just because they resemble an estranged serial killer. As soon as the news goes public, friends and even family members disown the “criminal” just like in the lottery where all of Mrs. Hutchinson’s friends turned on her. Mr. Summers, who interacted with Mrs. Hutchinson earlier, in a friendly manner, “….and Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said cheerfully. ‘Thought we were going to have to get on without you, Tessie” (2) completely turned on Mrs. Hutchinson by the end of the story “All right, folks…….Let’s finish quickly.” Even Mrs. Hutchinson’s own family turned on her. “The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles” (6). To the whole population of the village, the lottery was a ritual that had became a huge aspect of the villagers lives and thought nothing of it. Just like American’s accept...

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...of Human Services
Pre-Class Assignment
Communications Skills 2
The Lottery
By Bobby Sampson
2/2/13
The Lottery by ShirleyJackson is the story of a village following a tradition that results in the sacrifice of one citizen each year by stoning. The author ShirleyJackson shows the reader how following the unknown may result into sorrowful actions if one is too apprehensive to ask questions. Although the villagers do not know why they follow the tradition they willingly participate until they become the victim. ShirleyJackson provides a story full of brutal undertones about a village that performs human sacrifice and blind fellowship that is similar to the mentality of racism.
While reading The Lottery the story has a brutal undertone that is evident in the atmosphere and the personality of the characters in the story. From the opening ShirleyJackson describes a peaceful setting but it is full of tension. The first example that something is discomfiting is the children’s attitude when they are dismissed from school, “the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them” (Jackson, 1948). Jackson sets up an ideal summer day, but as her descriptions become more in depth the young boy’s actions also show signs of a slow shift in the atmosphere. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets...

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Literary Analysis of Shirley Jackson’s: “The Lottery”
by
Cary Sanders
English 1320-Section 15
Dr. J. Drummond
April 2 , 2015
Sanders i
Outline
Thesis Statement: People will often unquestionably follow tradition and the crowd without ever stopping to think about why they are doing what they are doing.
I. Plot
A. Summer Time
B. Small Town
II. Characters
III. Theme of Story
A. Blind Tradition
B. Unquestioning Allegiance
IV. Is it not ironic?
A. Lottery equals death?
B. Think before you do
V. Be careful of blindly following the crowd.
Sanders 1
“Literary Analysis of Shirley Jackon’s: “The Lottery”
The story of “The Lottery”, takes place in the town square of a village where the beauty of summer is on full display. Characters from all age groups are represented; from boisterous children to the easy going elderly participate in this story. The main characters of the story are: Mr. Summers, who conducts the lottery, Tessie Hutchinson, who is stoned at the end of the story, Old Man Warner, the oldest man in the village who condemns the progress of other villages, Bill Hutchinson, Tessie Hutchinson’s husband who goes with tradition at the expense of his wife, and Mr. Harry Graves, who is the postmaster who assists Mr. Harry Graves with conducting the lottery.
The hook of the story is how the story turns...

...Professor Eklund
The Lottery by ShirleyJackson: An Analysis
The short story “The Lottery” by ShirleyJackson was written in 1948 and takes place in a small town, on the 27th of June. In this story, the lottery occurs every year, around the summer solstice. All families gather together to draw slips of paper from a black box. When reading this story, it is unclear the full premise of the lottery until near the end. The heads of households are the first to draw a piece of paper from the black box. The paper with the black dot on it indicates which family is to draw again. Then pieces of paper for each family member are placed in the box and each family member must draw again from the black box. The paper with the black dot on it determines which of the family members is to be stoned to death, as stated in the story towards the end. There is much symbolism in this tale, from the black box used to store the papers, the papers themselves, to the wooden stool used, the time and day the lottery takes place, the names of the participants, the method for killing the chosen one, and the chosen one herself. Though the story can be construed as somewhat morbid, there is much to be learned from the story “The Lottery”.
The black box used in this story is described as being shabby and “in some places faded or stained”....

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I am writing my essay on “The Lottery” by ShirleyJackson. There are several themes that run through this classic short story. One would be the long standing traditions. The mysterious lottery is one example. Villagers continue the lottery year after year because, as one of the villagers would say, “We have always had a lottery as far back as I can remember. I see no reason to end it.” The black box that contains each citizen’s name is another example. Another theme would be that of man’s cruelty toward other men. What appears to be a peaceful town suddenly turns ruthlessly violent in the end. Although some townspeople raise questions about the lottery, they all go along with it in the end. This makes them become unthinking members of a herd, forfeiting their individuality and sending Tessie Hutchinson to her death. That of gender is also involved in this story. The society is male-dominated, and the women are even submissive to their young male children. The central conflict of this story would be when Tess Hutchinson disagrees with the result of the lottery.
To summarize the plot, the villagers of a small town gather together in the square on June 27, a beautiful day, for the town lottery. In other towns, the lottery takes longer, but there are only 300 people in this village, so the lottery takes only two...

...characters that are named in Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery”. Mr. Summers, a kindly man who runs a coal business, Mr. Martin and his sons, Baxter and Bobby. There is Mr. Graves, the man who helped Mr. Summers prepare the lottery, and Old Man Warner. There is Mr. Hutchinson, Mrs. Hutchinson, and their daughter Eva and son-in-law, Don—just to name a few. And although Jackson’s story has many characters, she is most interested in the social phenomenon of the lottery than she is in the characters, themselves. Instead, the characters serve as a means to depict “a graphic demonstration of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in people’s lives” (213).
From the start of the story, throughout, and in the end, Jackson defines her view of society’s insouciant attitude toward violence with the villagers’ apathetic way of life. Every year on June 27th, the families of the village (and of other towns, too) gather in the center of town and participate in a lottery which culminates with the stoning death of a member of one of the families. This heinous tale takes place amid a pleasant setting, “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (213). She writes of the children playing and little boys gathering stones that are stockpiled and guarded and ready for the...

...Tradition
The village lottery culminates in a violent murder each year, a bizarre ritual that suggests how dangerous tradition can be when people follow it blindly. Before we know what kind of lottery they’re conducting, the villagers and their preparations seem harmless, even quaint: they’ve appointed a rather pathetic man to lead the lottery, and children run about gathering stones in the town square. Everyone is seems preoccupied with a funny-looking black box, and the lottery consists of little more than handmade slips of paper. Tradition is endemic to small towns, a way to link families and generations. Jackson, however, pokes holes in the reverence that people have for tradition. She writes that the villagers don’t really know much about the lottery’s origin but try to preserve the tradition nevertheless.
The villagers’ blind acceptance of the lottery has allowed ritual murder to become part of their town fabric. As they have demonstrated, they feel powerless to change—or even try to change—anything, although there is no one forcing them to keep things the same. Old Man Warner is so faithful to the tradition that he fears the villagers will return to primitive times if they stop holding the lottery. These ordinary people, who have just come from work or from their homes and will soon return home for lunch, easily kill someone when they are told to. And they don’t...

...Satire/Irony in ‘The Lottery’: The Lucky Ticket
The use of Satire/Irony within literature establishes situations where the unlikelihood of the occurrence of an event will happen. Jackson’s manipulation of his story, The Lottery, provides an unexpected twist to what one may seem to be a normal subject. Northrop Frye’s The Singing School, suggests that all stories are told in either one of four ways: Comedy, Romance, Tragedy or Satire/Irony (Frye 18). The use of Irony and its conventional associations eludes the reader from interpreting a story as a Romance, but instead give the reader a reversed twist. This use of ironic convention in literary work is seen through Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery; the story of Tessie Hutchinson, stoned to death after winning her village’s annual lottery. Thus, The Lottery, according to Northrop Frye’s literary model, is a Satire/Irony.
Jackson’s use of The Lottery as both the title and event, along with its conventional associations is ironically reversed in the end. A lottery, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is a procedure for distributing something (usually money or prizes) among a group of people by lot or by chance are distributed to the winners among persons buying a chance (Webster’s Dictionary). The lucky winner of the lottery reaps the benefit of his/her luck and wins the prize of...

...Topic 2 – Othering
Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Lottery”, takes place on June 27th in a very small village of about only 300 people. This day is what they call the day of the lottery, hence the title. The Lottery is a tradition they have done for years, where the entire village gathers in the square, wait for their name to be called, which they then pick a small piece of paper from a black box, and patiently wait for everyone to pick their piece of paper. Once all the names have been called, everyone is to open their piece of paper, and the one person who has the small dot of lead staring back at them, is the one who is subsequently stoned to death. Since it was written in 1948, we can assume the story also takes place in this time period. With the title being about a lottery, you would assume there is a happy ending. You get a great sense of community, everyone being uplifting and light-hearted about this particular day, not knowing the events to come, and it is taking place on “a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (Jackson, 242).
They seem to be one of the few towns or villages who still partakes in “the lottery”, which is where I get the first sense of “othering”. This community, as well as the other communities who participate, are labeled as the one’s still continuing the tradition of the lottery,...